Yekaterinburg, Russia: Qatar defeated Switzerland 29:19 in a Group C second-round match to post their first win at the 2015 IHF Men’s Youth World Championship at the Palace of Sports Stadium here on Sunday night.
Qatar dominated right from the start with Moustafa Heiba opening the scoring. Simon Schild scored the first goal for the Swiss but the Europeans went quiet after this success.
Qatar hustled to create a four-goal lead after 10 minutes of play (5-1) at which point Swiss coach Michael Suter was forced to call a time-out.
Switzerland’s key left-back Albin Alili, who was injured in their first match against Croatia, was substituted on. But Qatari goalkeeper Ahmed Abdelrhem’s brilliance kept the Swiss at bay. Alili, who scored a total of nine goals on Sunday night, finally broke through in the 14th minute — taking the score to 8:2.
The situation only got worse for Switzerland from there and when Qatar hit an advantage of 10 goals in the 19th minute it seemed the European team may have reached the point of no return.
But the Swiss started off well after the break, opening with a 4:5 run that took the score to 18:10 at the 40-minute mark, but it was impossible for them to recover from the nine-goal deficit at half-time.
Qatar finished with a 10-goal lead, with Abdelfattah and Gueis scoring six goals each.
Speaking after the match, the coach of Qatar’s youth team, Julian Ruiz Gomez, said: “I am very happy of course for the win, but most important (thing) is the level of my players coming back. If we lost today we would be in a little crisis now, but the position is better to play the next matches. I think it is normal when we work with young players that they are up and down.”
The second match of the day was fiercely contested between hosts Russia and Croatia.
Backed by around 2,000 fans, Russia scored the winner (30-29) in the last minute after a pulsating hour of action. The winners led 13-12 at half-time which confirms that the result could have gone in either team’s favour.
“We were surprisingly patient today in the key moments of the match. However, there are
some details we have to improve in the upcoming matches,” said Russia head coach Alexander Alekseev.
Croatia line player Ante Babic said their closing minutes were not good enough. “We made many individual mistakes, both in attack and defence, particularly at the end of the match,” he said.
Denmark finished the day for the group, picking up two points with their second win of the tournament against Algeria (33-19, half-time 15-7).
Denmark lead Group C with four points, same as Russia, but occupy the first position on better goal difference (+22), compared to Russia’s +12. Qatar are third with 2 points, ahead of Switzerland (2) on goal difference. Croatia are fifth and Algeria last.
Qatar are scheduled to take on Algeria in their next match today.
QNA
